Battlefield 3 performance bug caused by Render.PerfOverlayEnable console command
I recently downloaded Battlefield 3 again but it has been absolutely unplayable. I used to get about 80 fps on the same PC a few years ago, but now it has dropped down to 15 FPS. And I have this problem only with Battlefield 3. Every other game runs perfectly fine. I also discovered that I am not the only person with this problem, but a few other people have it too and have never been able to fix it.
After some research online and testing, this issue is caused by a console command in the game called Render.PerfOverlayEnable. Setting it to 0 instantly fixes my FPS, but it resets everytime I respawn, so I have to keep doing it over and over again in a single game. I even tried creating a user.cfg file and adding the command in there as recommended by some people, but that didn't work either.
Given the name of the command, I also tried disabling every single overlay I have and closing all applications except for BF3. But that didn't work either. My drivers are up to date, my Windows is up to date. Some people have suggested that Windows update could be the issue, but my friend also plays this game on a fully updated copy of Windows and has never had this issue.
I'm honestly lost at this point. I've tried everything there is to try. It seems like such a niche issue that has affected very few players, and we still don't have a fix for it. If someone out there knows what's causing this, please help me fix this.